Update Dec 21st, 2018

There has been a new patch today in which this bug has been fixed. Affected games should also be fixed.

Issue

When trying to travel to another lot, I’m booted to the world selection with the following error message: The game failed to load. Error Code:102:9285f331:ba9bffb8 It is recommended that you relaunch the game.

When I try to load a certain lot, I’m booted to the world selection with the following error message: The game failed to load. Error Code:102:9285f331:ba9bffb8 It is recommended that you relaunch the game.

Cause

Both issues have the same cause although they are slightly different. The underlying cause for both are relationships to Lin-Z.

If you bought the new smart system Lin-Z, Sims in your household might have issues traveling. This seems hit and miss and I haven’t found out when it occurs but it’s possible that it only occurs if one of your Sims has a phantom relationship to Lin-Z (explained below).

The second issue is more game breaking as you can’t load any lots with the affected Sims on them. It occurs, if a Sim visited a lot you had Lin-Z on and then later deleted or moved into your household inventory.

If you delete Lin-Z you will see that the object relationship is still present for your Sim. This is not the case for the talking toilet so there’s an issue with the relationships to the object.

It seems that your Sim forms a phantom relationship if you are in the same room/lot and don’t interact with it. If you only listen to music or dance, some bond is made but it doesn’t show in your relationship bar. Only actively interacting with Lin-Z (any other interaction then dance or music) will make a relationship appear in your relationship panel.

This is especially bad for NPCs on your lot cause they can’t fully interact with Lin-Z but can listen to music and dance.

Solutions

It’s basically a loose-loose situation. If you delete Lin-Z to be able to travel again in your active family, you will trigger the second issue for any Sim that visited your lot while you had Lin-Z. It is possible though that it’s a phantom relationship within your household that’s causing issues.

There’s several solutions/workarounds that you can try, depending on which issue(s) you’re seeing

Solution 1

Load a backup from before you bought Lin-Z.

Solution 2

If you only have issues with your current family and traveling, make sure that all family members interact with Lin-Z so they form a proper relationship (toddlers and animals are probably not able to). After that, delete Lin-Z from all your lots and don’t buy a new one until the bug is fixed.

Solution 3

If you have the second issues, it depends if the affected families are important to you or not. Delete them from your game if they are not.

I think it’s important that all the corrupted Sims are removed from your game as it’s possible that you can’t load certain lots if they are visiting there.

For Sims you care about, use the method below.

Identifying the Sim

If theres’ more than one Sim in the household you can’t load, you need to find out which one is the corrupted Sim. To do so, split your household into two parts and move the second part in somewhere. Try to load both lots. If one of them loads, then those Sims are fine. Split them further until you find out which Sims are corrupted. There can be multiple. Write down their names.

Fixing the corrupted Sims

BACKUP YOUR GAME

Keep them in your separate household and make sure you only have Sims in the house they used to live in that are not corrupted.

Load that house

Buy a Lin-Z (there’s only one Lin-Z relationship so it doesn’t matter if you buy another one, it’s practically the same as in the other home)

Make sure all Sims in the household interact with Lin-Z. There needs to be a visible relationship in the relationship bar.

Invite the faulty Sims over

Enter: testingcheats true in the cheat bar (ctl-shift-c)

Shift-Click on the faulty Sims and add them back to the family

Make them interact with Lin-Z so they also get a visible relationship

Save your game under a new name

Go to the map and try to load your lot

If that is successful, delete Lin-Z

Go to the map and try to load your lot

If that’s still successful, yeah, you fixed your household

Repeat those steps for every household that’s affected and that you care about.

Solution 4

Wait for EA/Maxis to fix this bug but be aware that this will probably not be happening before Christmas (although I like to be surprised). I do believe they should be able to fix games that are affected with a proper fix.

Be aware that the error number you get is important in it’s whole length. If you have different numbers after 102, your issue is different from this one and might be mod related.

How to prevent

Don’t buy Lin-Z.

Credits

Credits go to Meg1Giles1 and everyone that participated in the thread at AHQ and helped figure this out or sending their saves.

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